There You'll Find Me
Read There You'll Find Me Online
Authors: Jenny B. Jones
Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #People & Places, #Europe, #Religious, #General, #Social Issues, #Depression & Mental Illness, #ebook, #book
There You’ll Find Me
Other novels by Jenny B. Jones
Just Between You and Me
Save the Date
Y
OUNG
A
DULT
N
OVELS
The Charmed Life Series
So Not Happening
I’m So Sure
So Over My Head
There You’ll
Find Me
Jenny B. Jones
© 2011 by Jenny B. Jones
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a registered trademark of Thomas Nelson, Inc.
Thomas Nelson, Inc., titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fund-raising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected].
Scripture quotations are taken from the King James Version of the Bible and the
HOLMAN CHRISTIAN STANDARD BIBLE
. © 1999, 2000, 2002, 2003 by Broadman and Holman Publishers. All rights reserved.
Publisher’s Note: This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. All characters are fictional, and any similarity to people living or dead is purely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Jones, Jenny B., 1975–
There you’ll find me / Jenny B. Jones.
p. cm.
Summary: Eighteen-year-old Finley, seeking God, quiet time to prepare for an audition at a prestigious music conservatory, and knowledge of the land her deceased brother loved, spends senior year in Ireland, where teen movie idol Beckett Rush, equally troubled, desires her company.
ISBN 978-1-59554-540-4 (soft cover)
[1. Celebrities—Fiction. 2. Actors and actresses—Fiction. 3. Grief--Fiction. 4. God—Fiction. 5. Foreign study—Fiction. 6. Diaries—Fiction. 7. Ireland--Fiction.] I. Title. II. Title: There you will find me.
PZ7.J720313The 2011
[Fic]—dc23
2011025477
Printed in the United States of America
11 12 13 14 15 16 QG 6 5 4 3 2 1
Like Finley, this year I unexpectedly lost a member of my family, my stepdad. He left us just a few months before he would’ve seen his dedication. I’m so grateful for his impact on my life. He taught me to appreciate food—a little too well. He was chili at the stove, food delivered to my door on deadline, Mark Twain quotes, house disaster calls at 3 a.m., one-liners, and intelligence. He would’ve walked through fire for me, then brought me back some clever souvenir. He was one of my biggest supporters and my friend. I loved him for the dad he didn’t have to be. But was.
So I’ll just pretend it’s not too late, and he can read this. To quote John Mayer, “Say what you need to say.”
This book is lovingly dedicated to Kent Hughes. Long ago you took on two kids when a new Labrador would’ve been easier. Thank you for all you’ve done for me, from fixing my toilet to encouraging my career. If I had to count each favor, it would be in the billions. And we both know if I count past a thousand, I get a little confused.
Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ, and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.
—C. S. Lewis,
Mere Christianity
Contents
S
ometimes I think about when I was little, and my older brothers would take me out to fly kites.
“Give it some slack!” Will would yell.
It was almost painful to watch, that kite of mine.
Tethered to the string in my hand. Dancing in the sky all alone.
My breath caught in my throat, my pulse beating wild and crazy in my chest. My heart soaring with every dip and turn of the kite, as if I were flying along, instead of standing with my two feet on the ground, squinting against the sun to see the dance.
What if it fell?
What if the breeze took it away?
I counted the seconds until I could reel it back in.
I was that kite.
Fragile against the wind. Soaring one minute. Spiraling straight down the next. Just looking for something to hold me up.
Before I spun out of control and flew away.
Disappearing from sight.
I’m on my way to Ireland! I’ve pretty much lost a whole night’s sleep on the plane, but who cares? Great things are waiting for me. I know it.
—Travel Journal of Will Sinclair, Abbeyglen, Ireland
M
iss?”
I pulled out an earbud as the flight attendant leaned over me. “Yes?”
“We have a few seats available in first class. Would you like to have one of them?”
Seats like recliners, meals that didn’t taste like burned Lean Cuisines, and no guy in front of me leaned back ’til he was in my lap? “Yes, please.”
I grabbed my backpack and followed the woman through the narrow aisle, dodging two ladies on their way to the bathroom.
Five more hours of the flight to Shannon, Ireland. I couldn’t get there fast enough. But a cushy seat would surely help pass the time.
“Here we go.” She smiled widely, and her eyes brimmed with an excessive amount of enthusiasm for a good deed she surely did every day.
Thanking the flight attendant, I slipped into the seat, the leather crunching beneath me, and set my backpack at my feet.
“Have fun,” she said.
Have fun?
I glanced at the guy beside me. He leaned against the wall, his head propped into his hand, a Colts hat covering his head and shielding his eyes from view. From the stillness of his body, he had to be asleep.
I settled in, pulled out my travel pillow, zipped up my hoodie, and burrowed. Reaching for the newspaper, I opened to the second page, where the article from the front left off.
. . . The latest bombing in Iraq has been claimed by terrorist Hassan Al Farran, ringleader of the al Qaeda cell thought to be responsible for the deadly blast in Afghanistan that killed a schoolhouse of children, as well as CNN correspondent and humanitarian Will Sinclair, son of hotel magnate Marcus Sinclair. On the Most Wanted list, Al Farran is number four in command in the Taliban and continues to elude capture.